How soon to post a new mod
 

Half-newb question here, but didn't find the answer anywhere else. I hadn't played SEIV for awhile, but recently got re-interested. I've been working the past week and a half or so on a SEIV gold mod to make the galaxy work and evolve how I've pictured it from various other games and TV shows. My real question is at what stage would it be recommended to release a mod? I'm to the point where I've put in most of the large scale changes I want to, but I've only done about a days worth of testing on it. I'd like to get it out there for some input, but I'm not sure anyone wants to spend much time playing around with a mod that's far from being polished. Most of the testing I'm at now is to finding various bugs/exploits with my changes and to make sure everything still balances. Suggestions?

As for a sneak preview of the mod; In general, things are slowed down immensly compared to a normal SEIV game. I've found it unrealistic for a civilization that's just starting to explore space to suddenly be able to pop out a dozen ships or more in the first couple years, colonizing half a dozen planets. The first colony ship should take more than a year to complete, for example. The other big thing about construction is it's designed to be done in space, ala Star Wars. The component ship yards are more advantageous than the planetary ones, but you also have to put them on space stations, meaning your shipyards could be crippled in an attack if unprotected. In a minorly construction related note, the mod is going to heavily favor carriers and fighters, they'll be more expensive, but more powerful.

The other major change is in engines/movement, which I probably spend a good 5 days straight getting it to work well. I've always seen larger ships as lumbering and slow, and shouldn't be able to outrun smaller ships at the same engine tech, so I was dis-satisfied with the Quasi-Newtonian method. I invented a new system where the different types of engines are different sizes instead of improvements (which is what upgrading from Ion 1 to 2 is for), each specifically designed to be most advantageous for a certain weight range of ships. That, in combination with exhaustive changes to Max engines, engines per move of all the ships and the standard and bonus movement points for all the engines resulted in a system where low-end ships are fast, and use the lower end engines, but cant use the larger engines. Large ships don't get any use out of the smaller engines, and require the bigger ones to move effectively. The largest ships require the largest engines just to move, and even then are still rather slow, to offset the massive firepower they carry. Here's a quick chart for the movement points for each ship at each engine level that show's a little better what I'm trying to describe.
Movement chart

The first picture is the original set of movement with my design. The second set is with an engine expansion I just added today, which might need a little tweaking. The far right shows at what tech level each of the engines becomes available for the expansion. The first 3 types of ships tend to get the most out of ion engines, the second set of 3 out of C-T, the third set out of JP, and the Last set, plus the baseships, Quantum engines.

ahhh insomnia. Enough rambling about my mod, time to try and get some sleep.

[ November 25, 2003, 10:09: Message edited by: mvstang ]

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

hi, welcome to the forums.

cheese?

i havn't got near completed on my own mod yet, but i suppose one answer is 'would you want to play this?'

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

My mod is still in the thinking stage. I just don't have a lot of spare time right now, especially with a 3 year old who refuses to go to bed when you tell him to. One of these days...

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

There is nothing wrong with posting a beta Version to get some input. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif It helps iron out bugs before the mod is officially released.

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

GB http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

MVSTANG...

Some questions... and comments

1. Is this for multi player or single player. ( multi player games need stuff to happen or people lose interest. )
2. Construction done in space is very cool will you be decreasing the rates of the plantary ones ? If so how will this effect the building of facilities... Some such as the Temporal Space Yard take 10 turns as it is now...
3. Your current movement plan the BA at 5 makes me think that once it is descovered there is no reason to build the CR to the JG as They will be basically equal in combat. Same with the BH
4. Natually 3 can change depending on mounts etc...

Look forward to your replies

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

This will probably work better as a single player mod, or maybe a one-on-one mod. As you said, people will probably lose interest in a mod that tends to run quite a bit slower, so it probably wouldn't work well for a PBW game with 6+ players. I mostly designed it for myself to change a few things around, so there is less consideration to how well it will work for many players. It also may not work out too well for an extremely large galaxy, unless you're playing solo and don't mind it taking years and years to go from corner to corner.

The doubling of the movement speed with just 2 techs gets addressed with the engine expansion I just put in. The first small chart in the picture was more for a reference. It's easier to see how the engines compare to each other and compare to ships below than the 2nd chart, which is what is currently in the mod. With the exgine expansion, it takes until tech 5 before you double the speed of the low end ships.

Carrier vs. Attack Carrier. Carrier comes at fighter tech 3, the attack carrier at figther tech 4. I gave the carrier a +20% easier to hit penalty, the attack carrier only +10% easier to hit, and it only requires 30% of its weight to be fighter bays, instead of the carriers 50%. It's designed to be a more armored/shielded carrier with more firepower, but fewer fighters. It also is faster than putting the same amount of fighter bays on a dreadnaught (which is the same tonnage), so it's an advantage to build in that sense. The biggest problem with having a mod that's slow is it takes forever to test it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I'm still working through the beginning construction and game play bugs, after I get through that, the big thing I need to test is the balance of the ships against each other, especially with the goofy engine changes.

And as for the goofy engine changes, I think I'll let another chart speak for me instead of trying to explain it:
Movement Formula

The big colums to look at are Xe and EpMv, which are the max # of engines and the # of engines per move for each of the ships. The small box at the bottom shows the Tonnage, Standard movement and Bonus movement for each engine. The first S is the structural damage the engine can take, which is just double the tonnage for all engines. Ion engines are only 5 tons, Quantum are 400, the smallest ships can't even fit a Quantum engine on, and the largest ones only get 1 engine, so a single Ion won't help. Making the Ions mostly standard, and the larger engines with more bonus movement, I was able to eventually get the movement rates about where I wanted them. In a related note - solar sails have been removed from the game at this point.

However - this is not to say that the ships are at all balanced between each other when it comes to available firepower. Tesco's point about the BA is a good one, I didn't catch that. I may have to mod the engines around a little further to get rid of that bug, since it does make most of the ship classes useless, some of that will probably be done by adjusting costs, and the long build times. A BA may be about the same as a CR with movement, but it might take say 3 times as long to build a cruiser, and could cost vastly more resources. I found a similar bug where you could get a small advantage to put a repair bay and an emergency propulsion pack Lv 5 on a ship instead of a quantum engine, saving 230 tons for the same game turn movement on the largest ships. You're dead in the water when combat comes around though I believe.

As for construction, my next changes will be to balance the facilites. To overview construction, I expanded base contruction and ship yards from 3 techs to 9, and went from 3 sizes of space stations to 9.

There are still 3 planetary based shipyards:

SY O constuct with 150 per turn (no SY on planet)
SY I construct with 250 per turn
SY II construct with 500 per turn
SY III construct with 1000 per turn

(Temporal SY are 350, 750, 1500, although I may remove the temporal techs entirely)

and the 9 space based yards:

SY I 150
SY II 250
SY III 350
SD I 500
SD II 750
SD III 1000
OSD I 1500
OSD II 2000
OSD III 2500

these come at techs 1-9, with the planetary Versions currently coming at techs 1, 3 and 5. So, you'll have slight advantages with planetary based yards through the tech tree, until the very end, when the highest end construction facilites can only be built in space. (I figure you can build scouts, maybe cruisers and whatnot on a planet, but it makes more sense to be building a baseship in space instead of on a planet and launching it up). The 9 space SY's are roughly designed to fit the 9 types of space stations, which have tonnage values of:

300
500
700
1000
1250
1500
2000
3000
4000

The tonnage values of the space based SY's are the same as their construction value. (which might increase slightly later)

I plan on changing the facility mineral costs so that the 1st level can be built just a little slower than the same speed you could in an unmodded game with the first SY, and do the same with the 2nd and 3rd levels of the facilities (or beyond if applicable)

I think after I get the facilities "priced" out correctly, I might toss a beta Version up here before I go to Vegas over Thanksgiving, if people want to monkey around with it, but it isn't a Version I'd sit down and play to the end yet.

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

wow those rates will slow the game down http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

Mine won't be quite as extensive. I'll basically take the TDM mod and mix some things with it. But like I've said, it's just an idea in my head right now and I really haven't done much with it yet. Maybe when I have my next day off I'll tinker with it, if I don't have a honey do list or my son doesn't want to play with me that much.

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

Forgot one semi-significant point, the movement rates on the chart are assuming you pack in the maximum number of engines possible, which may not be optimal for an attack ship. Using the lowly scout as an example, in order to get it's max speed, you have to put nothing put engines on it.

The construction rates will be pretty slow, but that's something that'll be ironed out more later. Ship construction will be much slower comparted to an unmodded game than facilities construction will. It doesn't slow the game as a whole down too much at the beginning, since for the first year or so you're waiting to build that first ship, then go explore or colonize, then wait some more, so the turns go by pretty quick. I haven't gotten beyond about 10 years or so before I've found something that really needed to be changed though, so I'm not sure about the mid-late game.

Re: How soon to post a new mod
 

Hmm... a few questions... isn't doubling a ship's speed with just 2 improvements in engine tech a bit excessive? How did you manage to get each engine type "optimized" for each ship size, anyway? And finally, what's the difference between a Carrier and an Attack Carrier?